On the rewriting of Huckleberry Finn

 

Having been raised in the Los Angeles harbor and further educated in the Marine Corps, I grappled with several majors in college and perhaps mostly because of my grandmother ended up majoring in English.  She herself had gone deaf for a while as a girl but made up for her lack of education by reading.  She became an evangelist for reading and for one of my birthdays or perhaps Christmas she gave me the complete works of Mark Twain.  That set wouldn't be considered complete today, but I read the whole thing, parts of it more than once.  However, when the question arose, as it often did back then, about a major American novelist whose work could match the likes of Thomas Hardy, Henry James (who at heart was more British than American), or Joseph Conrad who was perhaps as much Polish in his writings as British.  But regardless of however much British James and Conrad were, they along with Hardy were the novelists I admired back then and didn't think the U.S. had produced anyone comparable, certainly not Mark Twain; although I read him with great attention -- but not in a long time.

I was surprised, and a bit appalled, that so few seem to have difficulty with what Percival Everett has done in his James.   I am prejudiced against the rewriting works of the past.   If this were done with a modern work, I suspect the previous writer or his estate would be suing the rewriter. 

Pretty much any classic can be rewritten to make it more politically and scientifically correct, but historians would urge such writers to leave the non-politically correct writings alone. You may not like Hitler's Mein Kampf, but it just isn't something someone interested in truth and accuracy would want to see rewritten. Someone might conclude that the revised version makes them happier and less offended, but historians will be offended unless they are interested in papers at some point that discuss the extremes writers who take up political causes are willing to go.

Back in the day when I thought I would continue on with my education, I thought I might examine the muckrakers. I read quite a few of them, even got a letter from someone related to the IWW, International Workers of the World. The left wing of today has no interest in rewriting the writings of Big Bill Haywood who spent his last days in Moscow, nor, in my opinion, should they.

Saint Sebastian's Abyss

 

I just read Saint Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber, published in 2022.   I was misled by reviewers who implied that much was to be learned about art history in Haber’s book.  That is true if much is to be learned about cooking from Jonathan’s Swift’s A Modest Proposal. 

Haber is poking fun at art critics who early on in their careers decide that what they have to say about art (or literature, etc.) is more important than what a painter (or poet) accomplishes. The narrator declares, “Schmidt and I were quenchless and insatiable when it came to the end of the world.” The Science Fiction Youtube critic, Moid Moidelhoff, frequently declares “I love the end of the world.”  Perhaps in his case, since he is an atheist, he means that he loves books about the end of the world.  But Schmidt and the Narrator (also atheists) are equally obscure about their love of the end of the world; although it seems most probable that Haber intends the “abyss” in the title of painting, “Saint Sebastian’s Abyss” to refer to the end of the world.  If so, given the nihilistic ending of his novel, Haber believes the end of the world to be a whimper rather than a bang – at least in the narrator’s opinion if not in Schmidt’s.

The narrator writes an opinion Schmidt shares, “Our classmates were only interested in becoming painters, which was preposterous since nothing good had been painted since the death of Cezanne in 1906.”

We do hear in our modern times that what is being done artistically, musically, poetically, etc. is inferior to the great accomplishments of artists and composers of the past.  Harold Bloom declared that Shakespeare, most importantly in his Hamlet, created “what we mean by “human.”  We aren’t willing to let go of Shakespeare or Rembrandt or Bach, Bloom wrote of the anxiety of influence serious poets and writers feel.  

So, what shall we think when Haber’s narrator declares, “Painting, I told Schmidt, admittedly to impress him, was a fool’s errand because painting had died with Cezanne in 1906 and to pursue painting was like pursuing an obsolete skill, becoming a chimney sweep or a town crier?”  This isn’t a judgement critics can legitimately make.  Of course they can and do, but creation is beyond them.  They, if they are any good, have studied their fields and have a good understanding of what the creations of genuine artists look like, and use these understandings to judge the works of new artists.  Only the most negative among them would declare that nothing good has been painted since 1906, written since Shakespeare, or composed since Brahms.

The narrator’s second wife, much to the outrage of Schmidt if not the narrator became a famous art critic.  She wrote a very successful biography of Paul Klee, perhaps achieving more critical adulation than Schmidt inasmuch as he was offended by her.  She in the course of things couldn’t abide the narrator’s overriding preoccupation with Saint Sebastian’s Abyss and left him.

Mark Habor in this novel has written what might be termed a poetic criticism of critics.  One cannot challenge them on facts because their stock and trade are their opinions.  The most successful and deft swing verbal sabers lopping off the heads of presumptive artists who create works that challenge their opinions.  Schmidt believed he had solved the meaning of the mysterious three initials affixed to Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, but dies before he can give the information to the narrator.  The narrator spends three years trying to find out the answer on his own but is unsuccessful.  Blinded Beckenbauer, the painter of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss created at least this one painting that is revered by many, but what has the snobbish Schmidt and the narrator achieved if their critical theories are determined to have no lasting significance.  

Beyond these matters, as reprehensible as Beckenbauer might be, and as out of touch with celebrity as modern artists would find him, he was so devoted to his art that he lost his eyesight in its pursuit.  But the narrator tells us he painted because it was the easiest way he had to make money.   

Saint Sebastian was in fact a great evangelist who was martyred twice for his efforts, the first time with arrows, which didn't kill him.  After he recovered, he went to Diocletian to warn him of his sins and was beaten to death.  Why in Haber's novel did Beckenbauer choose Saint Sebastian as the subject for a painting? Saint Sebastian was considered the Saint that protected the faithful against the plague and Beckenbauer suffered from syphilis which may have been considered a plague in Beckenbauer's day -- in Haber's mind.  It seems ironic that Saint Sebastian, a famous believer during early Christian times, martyred twice for his beliefs should be chosen by those featured by atheists in Haber's novel.   May we assume that Haber is an atheist as well?  If he is not that would be one more irony ladled from this novel. 

Comments on My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

I read some place that this book was the top best seller some place for some period of time – didn’t pay close attention to where, and so downloaded and read it.  Coming from reading about the most recent mass murder and hearing from someone something along the lines of “guns aren’t the problem.  You will know this if you think about previous generations who had even more freedom with guns but didn’t have the problems we have now.  No, the problem is that we have produced children who are homicidal maniacs.  It’s our deteriorated parenting skills that are at fault.” I found myself wondering whether this whimsical serial-murdering couple might foster a few more homicides.  After all, the lazy teen-ager might think, why spend a whole bunch of time learning how to be clever enough to get away with killing four or five people, when you can get an automatic rifle and kill ten or twelve people all at once?”

The narrator-husband of “My Lovely Wive” is clearly no match for feminist serial killing wife, and so is perfectly willing to help her do whatever she likes.  He doesn’t quite meet her standard for faithfulness, however, and so eventually finds himself in her cross hairs.  

The ending seemed to me weak.  The author couldn’t resist a bit of cleverness which doesn’t in my view work, but perhaps most readers will find it amusing.  

Further on Per Petterson's Men in My Situation

Petterson offers this hint about the men in his situation on page 10: “I could see them all in my mind’s eye, their cars parked in places like this along roads and streets, by bus stops, in garages and driveways, with men in my situation, half lying half sitting in their seats with their coats and cars pulled tight around them, trying to doze off for a few hours alone and finally being gathered up in the dark of night by soft hands and soundless winches, hauled together in long rows, one after the other, bumper to bumper, button to button, headlight to tail light, in a fellowship ranked by the man’s age and the brand of the car, as if waiting for the last rites, for oblivion, sleeping in a fetal position, their unshaven cheeks against the cold backs of their hands, barely breathing in the cold darkness.”

Comment: It seems strange that so many Norwegian men find it appropriate or even possible to spend so much time sleeping in their cars, imagining as I do that it is often very cold in Norway unlike here in California where I don’t recall ever sleeping in my car in that fashion.  Arvid had perfectly good places to sleep in his apartment, but for a while after Turid left him, he wasn’t comfortable enough to sleep unless he went outside and got in his 1979 Mazda.  

One of the reasons for Arvid’s breakup with Turid is described on page 20: “I had always traveled downtown with Turid to meet other young adults we knew, communists and poets, trade unionists, welders and lathe operators from . . . but then it slowly ebbed out.  Turid turned and found new friends who did not become my friends.”  

Comment: Although later on Turid after some emotional disaster that isn’t explained with her friends calls Arvid to come out to a bus station and pick her up, which he does.  She tells him that he is the only person she has, but by this time she no longer has him.  He shocks her by telling her to keep her life away from him.

He clearly blames her for the break. She ebbed away from the intellectual friends Arvid wanted to be close to and finds “colorful friends” she finds friends more suited to her.  They disappoint her in some unexplained way and she is ready to come back to Arvid.  Apparently, even though she moved out and divorced him, she believed she could always get him back if need be.  But she waited far to long for that. By then it was far too late.  Even if they were both soon to be, more or less, without friends, he no longer wanted her back.

After his separation from Turid, Arvid sought a time of one night stands but they didn’t begin well.  The first woman he went with seemed intellectually suitable.  She loved Mahler before Arvid knew him, but she was more experienced in the way of one night stands than he was and he took offense at her.  “Right before I closed the door behind us going into the flat she lived in, it felt imperative to look back to where I’d come from, which for the most part now lay in ruins . . . I turned into a pillar of salt.”

Comment: While I didn’t have any one night stands after breaking up with my first wife, I did go out with a few women, mostly from work.  I was looking for someone I could be serious about and so did not turn into a pillar of salt.  Arvid though was more resolute.  It didn’t work out for him with the Mahler lady, but it did with subsequent ladies.  Nevertheless he wasn’t comfortable with that life style even though he sought mood help from what he deemed appropriate novels, John Berger’s G, and a book about Casanova’s exploits are mentioned.  

A step up from one night stands was to obtain a “mistress.” While visiting his parents’ graves he noticed a woman standing alone by a recently dug grave.  He imagined she was the mistress of the recently deceased who waited until the legitimate family left before paying her respects.  “The mistress had stopped on the footpath.  When our eyes met, she didn’t drop her gaze, and so it was I who had to yield, as usual.  I looked a the stone again.  What little I was trying to hold together, fell apart.  I took the satchel, and then got up. . . She could have been my mistress. I thought.  But I didn’t want a mistress.  Or maybe I did, but it was too complicated, it was too late, my heart is not in it . . .”  The do keep looking at each other and so strike up a conversation, but Arvid seems more interested in finding out if his guess about her was correct than getting together with her himself.  

Comment: One of the Amazon reviewers wrote that while the story of Arvid was sad, at least he had his daughter Vigdis by the end of the novel.  That reviewer was addressing the matter of Arvid’s sadness, but it isn’t a satisfactory conclusion to the novel if that is all one has, an end to sadness because Arvid has the prospect of the renewed good relationship with his daughter.  Yes, that is a good thing for him to have, but he also needs a relationship to replace the one he had with Turid.  One-night-stands won’t do it, neither will the acquisition of a mistress.  

At this point, I’m reminded of Allie Sherlock’s relationship with her father.  Her mother died when Allie was I  nine, and when Allie was eleven she told her father, Mark, she wanted to busk.  Mark was indulgent, learned how to support her with camera gear, setting up a Youtube channel, protecting her while she sang, driving her the two and half hour distance between Cork and Dublin.   Allie  was Vigdis’s age when Petterson wrote the ending to Men in my situation.  I don’t have any special knowledge about Allie and her father beyond watching Youtube videos of her singing from time to time, but their relationship seems very good.  Also, it seemed that Mark was very friendly with some ladies closer to his own age.  Then too Mark seems much better balanced than Arvid and not at all given to panic.  Also Allie seems better balanced that Vigdis.  When Allie began singing at age eleven she seemed vulnerable and diffident, but by the time she was sixteen she was confident and in charge of her surroundings.  Vigdis at sixteen is far behind Allie at that age and may never equal her, but Petterson is encouraging us to believe, I assume, that Vigdis, will soon turn into a mostly normal girl through her continued relationship with her father.

Men in My situation, a review

 

Last night I finished Men in My Situation by Per Petterson, published in 2022.  I didn’t initially understand the title, because Arvid Jansen had experiences and was engaged in activities that didn’t seem common.  But now that I’ve finished it, I do see some commonality.  There are differences, but to some extent I also am a man in Arvid’s situation and so at the end can identify with him.

Arvid came out of a blue-collar environment and educated himself through reading – something my grandmother did and encouraged me to do: Books are out there on whatever subject you are interested in so you can, if you are smart enough, read whatever you like and become whatever you want.  I took my grandmother’s teaching to heart and even though I did go to college I was reading alongside what I was being taught, whatever I liked.

Arvid chose to become a writer.  He admits to being successful, beyond what would have been achieved if he’d taken a job in keeping with his blue-collar background.  A consequence of that choice was that he had educated himself beyond his family and friends, which is a form of alienation.  My own background was similar to Arvid’s.  I was raised in walking distance of the Wilmington part of the Los Angeles harbor. My parents and the parents of everyone I knew worked in some relation to that harbor.  My father was a lumber-carrier driver, which I did for a while part time during my college days.  My stepfather was a truck driver and got me into the Teamsters Union where I could work part time out of the Hiring Hall loading and unloading trucks on the docks.  

Then, as was the case with Arvid, my education qualified me for something beyond my blue-collar background.  A difference however was that when I entered the engineering department of Douglas Aircraft company there was a break with my past.  I no longer lived amongst or worked with the people who worked on the docks.  Arvid and I had become interested in the matters we read in books, books of little interest to the people we were raised among.  Arvid, however, became a writer, and until he became so successful, he could move away, he had to stay amongst the people he was raised with.  He had to endure the alienation commensurate with his intellectual interests. 

As happened to Arvid and most of us, perhaps, our initial marriage-partner-choice turned out to be bad.  Even though I married my first wife after three-years in the Marine Corps, I was only 20 when that happened.  What happened next was different.  Arvid gravitated toward a life of one-night stands; whereas I found someone who was very different from, and much more suitable for me than,  my first wife.

Arvid and I were separated from our kids at some point, but, except for the youngest, my kids were grown.  My son stayed nearby and while my daughters, live out of state, Utah and Idaho, I talk to them regularly by phone.  Arvid’s wife Turid denied Arvid any further contact with his children after he had a driving accident and injured his eldest child, Vigdis.  There is a heart rending conclusion when Turid turns Vigdis over to Arvid with instructions that he is to admit her to a mental institution.  At first he intends to comply, but with Vigdis standing next to him, he can’t do it.  If not that he is supposed to have her examined by a psychiatrist, but by this time Vigdis, is in the more agreeable presence of her father, and is coming out of her funk; so Arvid and Vigdis decide to spend the day driving.  One concludes that Vigdis’s “problem” was her inability to accept her mother and her mother’s friends; which Turid concluded was a result of mental instability, but once Vigdis is in the more rational presence of her father, she becomes her old self.  Arvid does not always make the right choices, but Vigdis understands him and can work with what he does and who he is.   

I read many of the Amazon reviews of this novel, and the frequent one-word summation was “sad.”  In modern hermeneutics which I take to include literary criticism, the text is not complete in itself.  The reader is part of the critical process.   Criticism of this novel, one would hope, could advance beyond the word “sad.”  

If we consider our species, for most of it we didn’t live beyond the age of 30.  To become 40 was to become an old man or woman.  Perhaps we are not emotionally equipped, most of us who are in Arvid’s situation, to stay in one relationship beyond the age of 35.  Petterson ends his novel when Arvid has reached the age most hunter-gatherers are at the end of their lives.  We men in Arvid’s situation now experience a period of sadness when our initial relationship, but no longer (for most of us) our lives end.  But inasmuch as our lives don’t end as well, for most of us, that sadness isn’t perpetual.  We learn from it, if we are rationally disposed, and make better choices in the future.  Will Arvid do that, make better choices in the future?  His 16 year old daughter will, if she is truly mentally stable as Petterson suggests at the end of his novel, will want to marry when she is 20.  She will then make the same mistakes that women in her situation will.  Perhaps by the time her mistake becomes clear, her father will be in a more stable relationship and thus be a stabilizing influence.  Perhaps her breakup before she is 40 will be easier than Arvid’s, for surely as a species we must be learning from all those previous breakups round about.  Or, perhaps Arvid and Turid’s breakup has been so traumatic for Vigdis, that she will wait until she is in her late 20s or early 30's and then marry wisely.  Some people, I’ve read someplace, actually do.

Pronunciation and other language fads

There is no "single" American pronunciation,  There are many, and they are being, or once were, studied.  About 60 years ago I took a course from a young woman who was working on a particular American dialect.  She was part of a scientific organization that did that sort of thing.  I can't recall how many dialects we had at the time or whether there have been many new ones since then, but as part of the course we were required to learn the code for designating the different sounds.  By the time we finished the course we could have  done the grunt work for one of these scientists recording and describing American dialects.  I can't refer to a text book for details since it has long since disappeared.  I don't even know if such a field continues to exist.  But with a little time and a good dictionary I think I could still recapture the code and how to use it -- though I can't think of an reason why I would want to at this point.

I recall another class, this one in Chaucer.  We were informed that Chaucer's poetry was for a long time thought poor and irregular because his critics had lost the sense of pronouncing fourteenth century end vowels. Even if we pronounced his poetry properly, I thought to myself, one would still need to learn the meaning (which has changed dramatically from his time to ours) of his words, and so reading his poetry was a time-consuming matter which I scarcely took beyond three or four of his far from uplifting tales -- whatever was required to pass the course.

And it isn't just the pronunciation and meaning of words historians and literary scholars have to contend with.  There are word fads and taste.

From one generation to the next what is "cool" or tastefully "in" changes.  We don't in most cases talk exactly the way our parents did.

And if some widely considered "great" poets and novelists of past ages had more of an historic sense and could have appreciated how short would be the time that their writings would be  faddishly "in," perhaps they wouldn't have drunk themselves to early graves in search of such fame.

Lawrence, entertaining dark thoughts in sequestered San Jacinto

Ian Baruma: was his retirement forced?

I don’t read all the articles in the NYROB and didn’t read “Reflections of a Hashtag” in the October 11 issue until in the following issue, October 25 I noticed in “letters to the editor” several pages of outrage that Ian Baruma had allowed this article to be published, after which Baruma seems to have been fired.

I didn’t know what a “Hashtag” was and had never heard of its author Jian Ghomeshi and so retrieved my copy of the October 11 and read it.  Ghomeshi seems like an obnoxious fellow, but I’ve encountered obnoxious fellows before in NYROB articles.  I then spent some time on the internet reading about Ghomeshi’s trial.    

One of the letters to the editor in the October 25^th issue of the NYROB is an expression of dismay by 109 signatories which includes several names I recognize, for example,  Anne Appelbaum, Mark Lilla, Joyce Carol Oats, Max Hastings and Helen Vendler.  They write, “We find it very troubling that the public reaction to a single article, ‘Reflections from a Hashtag” – repellent though some of us may have found the article – should have been the occasion for Ian Baruma’s forced resignation.  Given the principles of open intellectual debate on which the NYRB was founded, his dismissal in these circumstances strikes us as an abandonment of the central mission of the Review, which is the free exploration of ideas.”

The NYROB Editorial Staff replied to these signatories by saying “We understand our contributors’ concerns.  Rea Hederman, the publisher of the Review, has said publicly that Ian Baruma’s departure was not a response to the outrage over ‘Reflections from a Hashtag,’ and we strongly believe in Rea’s commitment to editorial independence.

              “With regard to the necessity of open intellectual debate and the free exploration of ideas in our pages, we couldn’t agree more.”

J.C. in the October 12^th issue of the TLS makes no mention of the NYROB’s claim that Baruma’s retirement was not forced, and writes, “Art Free from Politics; our compendium of statements in favor of artistic freedom – and freedom means freedom (within the law), even if we don’t like it or you don’t like it – is due to be submitted to Basement Labyrinth Publications on Voltaire’s birthday, November 21.  Some weeks ago we brought you an extract from George Orwell’s unused introduction to Animal Farm, in which he wrote that ‘At any given moment there is an orthodoxy . . . which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question’.  Anyone who challenges it ‘finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness’.”